Types of Web Application Testing: From Functional to Security Testing

Planning to launch a web application? No doubt, you are well aware of the development and design requirements along with the latest technological trends. But are you prepared for the comprehensive web app testing before the launch? Mostly, software testing is overlooked, as only minimal testing is conducted. 

However, web app testing is the most important consideration of the SDLC process, and it should not be overlooked at any cost. If you want your users to have the best experience with your app, make sure it undergoes a complete set of tests, starting from functional to end-to-end testing. 

Web application testing is highly essential in order to connect users with businesses, offering them a seamless user experience. When the app undergoes functionality, security, and usability, it results in a high-quality product. Comprehensive web app testing prevents potential issues such as poor user experience, broken functionalities, or vulnerabilities in security features before the market launch. 

The demand for software tests is now propelling at a rapid rate. The software testing market has surpassed the valuation of $45 billion in size, highlighting its major role. This global software testing market is all set to reach a valuation of $109.5 billion by 2027. 

Businesses planning to launch their app must be aware of various types of testing and its prime purposes. For an in-depth testing approach, it is better to invest in web application testing services. 

The purpose of today’s post is to help businesses understand major types of web app testing.

1. Functional Testing

Functional testing is the foremost mandatory method to ensure that the app’s features meet functional requirements. The tester checks that each feature of the app works as required. The functional testing process involves the app’s input and output. In addition, it includes user interaction, data manipulation, and the app’s response to desired scenarios. 

Types of Functional Testing:

• Unit Testing: Each of the app’s components or modules undergo testing. This testing process involves assessing the smallest unit of code in the application.
• Integration Testing: This testing is done by web application testing services to check the interactions between the incorporated components. It ensures that the integrated design elements and features are functional correctly. 
• Smoke Testing: This is a rapid test that examines how the basic functionalities of the app work. Smoke testing usually involves verification of critical software functions before moving on to in-depth testing. 
• Sanity Testing: It is a form of narrow testing that focuses on specific functionalities after making certain changes. It instantly examines whether the core features of your web app are functioning properly.
• Regression Testing: This is a specific functional test to ensure that code changes are not affecting the existing functionality. If the tester finds any effect due to code changes, it is fixed immediately.

Tools Used: The web app performance testing tools that are best for conducting all types of functional tests are:

• Selenium – Automating web app testing
• Cypress – Modern web applications
• QTP – Automated functional testing 

2. Usability Testing

The ultimate goal behind web app development is to offer a great user experience with seamless navigation to the end-users. So, before you market your app, it has to undergo usability testing to examine its user-friendliness and intuitiveness. Usability testing is a primary software testing that is used to check the app’s response to the user’s action. You need to understand the tips for selecting a reliable web app testing service to move ahead and hire the right provider. 

Key Aspects:

• Ease of Use: The main thing to confirm is that the app’s interface is intuitive. It primarily focuses on how effortlessly users can complete their tasks and interact with the app. The tester takes feedback from users during testing, which lets them identify key areas for improvement in design, features, and functionality.
• Navigation: Every user prefers to spend longer time on apps that are easily navigable. Make sure your users can easily navigate through web pages, different sections, and features without any hassles with the help of usability testing.
• Accessibility: This testing also showcases the app’s accessibility for users of every age group. If your target audience is children or older citizens, a usability test shows how your app is responding to their interaction. It also shows how accessible the app is for people with disabilities.

Tools Used: The web app performance testing tools for usability are:

• UsabilityHub – Remote user research tool
• Crazy Egg – Behavioral pattern test
• Google Lighthouse – For accessibility insights.

3. Performance Testing

Performance testing is the way to evaluate how the web app is performing. The test includes testing for stability and responsiveness under heavy workloads or peak traffic scenarios. The professional team of a web application testing company typically executes performance tests to examine aspects such as speed, reliability, robustness, and application size.

Types of Performance Testing:

• Load Testing: Testers conduct load tests to check how the app is working under expected traffic loads. The test is conducted in real-world load conditions. 
• Stress Testing: The stress test assesses the app’s robustness by letting it perform beyond its operational capacity. This performance test is to figure out how much stress the app can handle. 
• Scalability Testing: The test ensures that the application can manage high traffic and growing data volume without compromising performance. It evaluates how well the app adapts to heavy loads and identifies any potential limitations. 
• Spike Testing: The spike tests evaluate the system’s stability by simulating sudden spikes in load. It determines how well the system handles unexpected traffic surges and whether it can recover smoothly.

Tools Used: 

• Jmeter – Open-source performance testing tool 
• LoadRunner – It is best to find performance issues and bottlenecks.
• BlazeMeter – Realistic load testing
• WebLOAD – Load and stress testing

4. Compatibility Testing

Compatibility testing is another primary software test that examines the app’s functionality across multiple platforms, operating systems, and browsers to detect potential discrepancies. This test verifies that your app is performing effectively in its intended environments.

Key Aspects:

• Cross-Browser Testing: This compatibility test is conducted to ensure that the application functions as desired in different browsers. The testers of the web application testing company check its working functionality in Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.
• Cross-Device Testing: The test shows that the web app is responsive across multiple devices, such as desktops, tablets, and smartphones. This specific technique assesses that your web app fits required screen resolutions and sizes without any issues, offering the best user experience.
• Operating System Compatibility: This type of compatibility testing checks if the application works as required across various OS versions, such as Windows, iOS, macOS, and Android. It ensures that the software functions consistently regardless of the operating system used.

Tools Used: 

• BrowserStack – Cross-browser tests
• CrossBrowser Testing – Automated cross-browser testing
• Sauce Labs – Largest continuous testing cloud of web

5. Security Testing

The most important software testing is security testing to make sure the app is completely safe for the users, and it has robust encryption to protect against cyber attacks, both external and internal.  As app developers prioritize user safety and privacy, it is also important to make sure that the app itself is safe. Go through the tips for selecting a reliable web app testing service for secure testing performance. 

Types of Security Testing:

• Vulnerability Scanning: This scan is conducted to detect potential vulnerabilities in the app that can harm the functionality and user activities.
• Penetration Testing: It simulates attacks in order to find exploitable vulnerabilities that are dangerous for the app owner and their users. 
• Authentication Testing: It verifies that login processes and access controls function correctly as intended.
• Authorization Testing: This detects and verifies that the authorized users are only given permission to log in and use the permitted resources in the app.
• Session Management: Better management of session tokens and cookies is examined under this scanning process.
• Data Protection: The testers of the web application testing company confirm that the sensitive data of the users and the business, for example, personal info and transaction info, are well encrypted and secure.

Tools Used: Here, the web app performance testing tools used are:

• OWASP ZAP – Web app scanner
• Burp Suite – Vulnerability testing.
• Nessus – Critical vulnerability scanning solution
• Acunetix – End-to-end web security scanner

6. Interface Testing

Interface testing assesses how the web app performs to interact with the server and database to ensure hassle-free communication between them. It verifies that data flows as intended between these components without errors or inconsistencies. The testing process includes checking for proper data exchange, handling of errors, and message formatting. Testers focus on ensuring that the application responds as expected when interacting with the server or database.

Key Aspects:

• API Testing: This is an essential part of interface testing to ensure that the APIs deliver accurate responses to requests. It also checks how it handles errors smoothly.
• Server Testing: The servers are tested to detect the app’s interaction with them. It also underscores the need to detect server-side errors and their handling process.
• Database Testing: This software interface testing detects whether database queries are correct. Moreover, this software testing guarantees that the user and app data is managed securely without any cyber threats.

Tools Used: 

• Postman – Automated API Testing
• SoapUI – Automate advanced API Tests
• REST Assured – Java-based library

7. Compliance Testing

Compliance testing is a diverse category of web app tests that ensures that the application meets all standards, such as regulatory, voluntary, and legal requirements. The app, before the launch, must comply with Data protection laws and Accessibility standards.

Common Compliance Standards:

• GDPR: This standard mainly focuses on data protection and establishing a Privacy Information Management System, and it includes security laws in the EU.
• HIPAA: It is a compliance standard specifically made for healthcare apps to protect patients’ confidential data from public access.
• PCI-DSS: It is a security standard for businesses that store, process, or transmit user’s debit or credit card data and authentication information.

Tools Used: Varies based on compliance standards to help with privacy compliance.; tools like:

• TrustArc – Data Privacy Management Solutions
• Varonis – Automated protection

8. Localization and Internationalization Testing

The localization and internationalization software testing is a major focus on making an app perfectly usable and accessible to your global audience base. Localization testing ensures the app is usable for an audience in a specific region by seamlessly adapting the necessary languages, cultures, and regions. 

Key Aspects:

• Language Translation: This feature of the testing ensures the app’s adaptability to different languages, performing accurate translations.
• Date & Currency Formats: The tester adjusts the app to align with local conventions, such as variations in date formats. This ensures the application displays information correctly based on regional preferences.
• Cultural Sensitivity: This testing is to ensure that the app is not offensive to any user and does not have culturally inappropriate content.

Tools Used: 

• Smartling – Software for language translation and localization of content
• XTM Cloud – Multi-language translation platform
• Google’s i18n library. – Supports multiple languages

9. End-to-End (E2E) Testing

End-to-end testing is for simulating a real user’s journey through the application by testing complete workflows. This testing approach validates the entire system by ensuring every component functions together as expected. In addition, through E2E testing, web application testing services confirm that the user experience is seamless from start to finish.

Key Aspects:

• Real User Scenarios: This methodology involves testing the application from beginning to end, such as a user’s journey starting from the sign-up process or registration to product purchase. It ensures that each step of the user’s journey works as expected.
• End-User Perspective: The software testing assesses the web app from the user’s point of view. This methodology ensures that the web app is intuitive and, at the same time, meets the needs of the target audience.
• Cross-functional testing: This test involves combining multiple types of testing, such as functional and performance testing, within a single workflow. It confirms that the app performs well while meeting its functional requirements across different scenarios.

Tools Used: 

• Cypress – Comprehensive E2E tests
• TestCafe – Reliable E2E tests 
• Selenium – Automated tests
• Playwright – Faster testing solution

Optimize Your Web App Performance with Proven Testing Techniques!

Are you ready to ensure your web app delivers flawless performance and is all set for market launch? Before that, make sure it is comprehensive before it impacts users. Let your web app pass through different testing types, from functional to E2E, ensuring seamless functionality, security, speed, and user satisfaction. Get ready to leverage the on-trend advanced testing tools and techniques to enhance your web application’s user experience.